And I am wondering, as I did with Kerry, why didn't Obama see it coming?

An ad campaign by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, backed by some deep-pocket donors, torpedoed Kerry's strongest personal selling point in his campaign, his heroic Vietnam record. By the time he responded to the charges, valuable weeks of momentum were lost.

Obama's fast-response strategy avoided that sort of trap when mud came flying against him last year. But what happened to that well-oiled machine when the protests erupted against his health-care proposals at congressional town hall meetings?

Where are the youngsters who dropped their video games, got off the couch and turned out en masse for Obama last year? Ha! Young folks aren't turned on by health care. They don't think they'll ever get sick.

Instead, lots of us older folks turned out, including those over age 65 who are on Medicare and not likely to be affected by the new proposals. A similar promise didn't stop seniors from opposing President George W. Bush's Social Security reform proposals. The more speeches he gave around the country, the more opposition he faced until the proposal died.

Obama apparently failed to learn from Bush's experience. Instead, Obama's record-setting poll numbers have plummeted with record-setting speed. Tuesday, the president hit his lowest approval yet during his young term in office -- 45 percent of voters in a daily Rasmussen Reports tracking poll said they approve of the president's performance. Fifty-three percent disapproved.

Even though more than four out of five Democrats approve of Obama's overall performance as president and the same percentage of Republicans disapprove, Obama's biggest headache is with self-described independents. Sixty-six percent of them disapprove.

Granted, Rasmussen is just one poll and daily tracking polls are by nature very changeable. But other major pollsters have noted the same trends. Besides, Rasmussen's poll focuses on "likely voters." Most others look at a sample of "all adults," which tends to give Obama a larger percentage, but not of people who are likely to be deciding his re-election chances.

Why the slide? Let me count the ways:

*Economic recovery appears to be happening, but not by much. Wall Street is a leading indicator, but jobs are a lagging indicator. At this rate, economists say, it could be months before we see an upturn in jobs, despite promising news from Wall Street, and no one can say how many months.

*His stimulus package? Same problem. Economic experts say it has softened the impact of the recession and begun to create some jobs, but not as many as the economy has lost.

*Bad news from Afghanistan has caused Obama trouble, especially for his supporters on his left, as his advisers call for more troops without providing much of an exit strategy.

But Obama's slide appears to have come mostly because of mixed signals from the White House as to how closely he will stick to a public option to compete with private insurers in his final health-care proposals.

His plan also has been hurt by the lack of a clear argument as to what his proposal means for those of us who already have health care. It is heartwarming to hear him argue, belatedly, that health care is a moral issue.

But the biggest motivator in politics is a very practical question: Where's mine? Sure, our health-care system is broken but Obama needs to answer those nervous swing voters who wonder, to quote an old Johnnie Taylor tune, whether "it's cheaper to keep her."

Without strong leadership from the White House, the House and Senate have been casting about for alternatives like a national system of non-profit co-ops run by those who are insured instead of by the government. But no one is quite sure of what that might look like on a national scale. As expert Susan Dentzer, editor of Health Affairs, recently put it, "The main definition of a co-op at the moment seems to be that it's not a public plan and it's not private health insurance. It's a Goldilocks -- 'something in-between.'"

You campaign in poetry, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo famously said, and you govern in prose. The poetry of the campaign is long gone for Obama as he digs into the prose of actual legislation. He needs to trade some of his dwindling political capital to face up to moderate Democrats, as well as reluctant Republicans, to come up with a health overhaul that he can brag about. For better or worse, it's likely to set the tone of his presidency.

----------

Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage